Amazing Graphics - Much too hard
The title of this review basically sums up my main points. The graphics were well drawn and very polished, and many scenes were most likely touched up in Photoshop to give a more realistic feel. The Nene preloader was also a nice touch.
My only complaints about the graphics would be that going from movie to interactive was a pretty big jump because of the decrease in detail. It just looked odd to have these big detailed scenes and characters suddenly shrink down to small running sprites.
My other nitpick at the animation would be that when the bear is eating Pico's guts, it seems a bit off and fake. The bear is drawn in Flash and looks like a smooth vector graphic, while the image of Pico is clearly more detailed, and makes the bear look like he's not actually interacting with Pico when eating his guts.
The music in the Flash is top-notch. It's clear, high quality, and definitely gets your heart racing while playing through the two mini-games.
Moving on to the actual mini-games, the parts of the submission which really drag it down. Both are extremely difficult and frustrating, and playing through each a good fifty or more times to finally beat it isn't exactly fun.
The bear chase was significantly easier than the second one, but is still much too hard nonetheless. The fact that the rocks come at you so quickly AND the bear is approaching makes it all the more annoying. I ended up beating it by clicking a whole lot of times and was able to keep myself afloat to avoid the rocks. Ugh.
The bird mini-game really takes the cake in terms of the most aggravating "avoid-the-obstacles" game I've ever played. The rocks and walls take up a good portion of the screen most of the time, and the speed in which they come at your character pretty much makes it impossible for ANY error whatsoever.
After finally beating it (took a good 20 minutes, and I ended up winning by luck), the death at the end was more of a let down than anything else, as I had just spent so much time attempting to live. Not funny guys, not at all.
Some suggestions for the mini-games:
* Add a "Skip" option. Either at the start of the submission or after dying a certain amount of times (10 maybe? 20?)
* Add a health bar (especially to the bird one) so that you don't have to be completely perfect while playing through
* Decrease the speed or size of the rocks/walls in the bird mini-game.
My main problem lies with the mini-game section. I think that more mini-games of lesser difficulty would have suited the submission better than two extremely hard ones. The ending was more of a let down than funny as well. In any case, interesting combination of movie and game, looks amazing, but falls short in terms of playability.